Europe

Edited extracts from an article by Peter Taaffe, Socialist Party general
secretary, that will be published in the first 2016 issue of the
Socialist (7 January).

Edited extracts from an article by Peter Taaffe, Socialist Party general
secretary, that will be published in the first 2016 issue of the
Socialist (7 January).

In Britain and elsewhere, there is a bitter mood of resistance to the
deterioration in living standards and the prospect of more to come. A
further £10 billion worth of cuts in state expenditure on top of the
agonies suffered under the previous coalition government are to be
driven through by Osborne over the next four years.

The big butcher, Osborne, wants to franchise out the task of imposing
these cuts to the ’little butchers’ - and this is the way they will be
seen by workers at the receiving end - at local and county council
level. But with this will go the odium and unpopularity for doing the
dirty work of the Tory government.

This makes it even more urgent that pressure, particularly from the
trade unions and communities, is put on Labour councils to break with
the policy of passing on austerity, to lead them to the adoption of ’no
cuts’ budgets! Mobilise working people in the manner of the successful
resistance in Liverpool in the 1980s!

The underlying combative mood, which has existed for years and sometimes
decades, in the case of Britain, was just waiting for a catalyst.

Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership bid provided this. His victory was
unexpected, not least to himself and his immediate circle. It was a
spectacular manifestation of the law of unintended consequences.

The right wing of the Labour Party had successfully imposed a system
which eliminated the collective voice of the trade unions and gave the
right to vote to new ’registered supporters’ for the price of a pint of
beer!

Right wing’s intentions

Taken aback at Jeremy Corbyn’s victory, the right does not even pretend
to hide its intentions of replacing him. Young people and workers, both
inside and outside the Labour Party, are equally prepared to resist this.

They are demanding measures such as reselection to replace Blairite
dinosaurs with new fighting representatives in parliament and in
councils. It is not so much a veiled civil war as an open one.

Right-wing Labour supporters have brazenly announced that they already
have a thousand of the party’s ’richest donors’ in their pocket ready to
back them, particularly if they split and form a new party.

This scenario is likely to be played out in 2016. It is absolutely
essential that the left forces gathered behind Corbyn understand the
objective basis which compels the capitalists and their right-wing
Labour echoes to ferociously resist what is at this stage a mild
programme for change.

The movement in support of Corbyn’s leadership campaign, as we pointed
out, effectively created two parties: one, the discredited Blairites,
who could be easily swept into the rubbish heap of history; and the
other a new party in the process of formation, based upon the mass
desire for change around the figure of Corbyn.

Momentum’s path

However, his victory is not completely assured. Some of the Corbynistas
- for instance in the misnamed ’Momentum’ leadership, which is
threatening to become ’Stagnation’ - have a completely false
perspective. They wish to postpone all real struggle until after the
next general election in 2020. This in a period that is likely to be one
of the stormiest in recent British history, with a clamour from the
ranks of the labour movement and the working class for decisive action
to resist and defeat the Tory government.

Weakness invites aggression! Momentum’s leaders imagine that if they
capitulate to the right, abandon reselection of MPs, mollifying them
with sweet words, this will in some way insulate Corbyn against
criticism from these quarters and prevent moves for his overthrow.

The right can only reconcile themselves to Corbyn if he retreats
completely, politically and organisationally - becoming a political
puppet in effect - which could result in his support ebbing away.

But even then that might not meet their test of ’electability’ and he
will be replaced.

He is in a no-win situation - with the capitalists, their press and
their faithful representatives within the labour movement, the Blairite
right, conducting a relentless campaign of lies and misrepresentation.
If he wins an election, it is despite him and his programme. If he
loses, it is down to him and his programme!

Labour’s schism

A complete cleavage - a split - in the Labour Party is not to be ruled
out. Indeed, a former editor of the pro-Labour Daily Mirror, Roy
Greenslade, wrote in the Guardian: "The Labour Party no longer makes any
sense in its current form... The Labour Party has shown amazing
resilience through its 115-year history. The broad church has survived
any number of past crises. But, as with all parties of the left, it
cannot sustain itself much longer. It is now on the brink of complete
disintegration."

And the evidence for this? Greenslade writes: "John Mann MP was quoted
in the Sunday Telegraph warning Corbyn not to allow deselection of his
colleagues because it would create a civil war. Does he think there
isn’t a war already?... Labour grandees are aiming to crush Momentum by
calling on ’former big benefactors’ to create a ’war chest’ ready to
mount a challenge to Corbyn in the future."

In other words, irreconcilable forces confront one another. One is
located in capitalism and everything it stands for: war, savage cuts
imposed on working people, etc. The other is radical, anti-austerity and
instinctively looking towards a break with all the rotten Blairite
policies of the past.

The Momentum leadership, who themselves are under attack from Tom Watson
and others for being a ’party within a party’, reply to this not with
defiance and a programme of resistance but by their own little
witch-hunt. How much further to the right indeed they are than the left
of the 1980s who, initially at least, opposed bans and proscriptions
against Militant and others.

They understood that those attacks were just the opening shots in the
campaign by the right to eliminate all vestiges of a working class,
socialist programme. They believed in answering political opponents
through democratic discussion and debate.

This is still the real traditions of the left and particularly of the
new generation who are moving into political struggle because they have
seen the stultifying effects on them and their generation which
capitalism now represents